Dear Svieta,
I received your letter. It made me very happy.
Thus began every piece of correspondence with my pen pal from Soviet Union. We had an unspoken agreement to always start that way, with a canon of epistolography. Many years passed since either of us wrote these words. A few good weeks have gone by since I last wrote for this blog. I feel like writing an opening phrase to you:
Dear Reader,
I am sorry I have not written for a while. I hope you understand.
I will write about Svieta, who I really knew in person. She remained my friend through letters for a couple of years after I returned to Poland in 7th grade. In the USSR she lived upstairs, in a long concrete block of flats in a 1960s development. Ours was one of several parallel buildings. I remember them as frozen grey-brown slabs in a leafless landscape, exposing the short sides of parallelepipeds to the street frontage. Each windowless side wall had an enormous propaganda painting: a face of Lenin, a bust of a strong female farmer with a sheaf of wheat, or a picture of an atom (we were living in a Soviet version of Springfield from the Simpsons) . The murals were clearly visible, at a slight angle from the main Komsomol Street. That street was often used by scary funeral processions, with coffins on truck beds draped in red and brass orchestras playing loud and slow in a minor key.
Each big block had a single-digit number, and, even thought there were multiple entrances, the apartments were given “running numbers”. Ours was 54, Svieta’s 61. This was in a telling contrast to the Polish System. In Wroclaw every entrance had a double-digit number and the apartment arrangement repeated in every “stack”: numbering from 1 to 10, for example. Even as a fifth grader, I realized that the Russian system significantly obliterated individuality.
I spent hours in Svieta’s apartment, even though I did not understand her obsession of prank calling a blond curly hair bespectacled eighth grader named Kiril. I did not have many friends. I was shy and small. I was a foreigner who refused to wear the scratchy brown wool pioneer outfit and instead wore a bright baby blue polyester frock that buttoned down the front. You might think my brother and I could have been popular, as some unknown kids regularly lined up under our windows and chanted “zhevachku” for chewing gum they thought we had. But I seemed to gravitate to the outcasts: tall and skinny Olya or round-faced Svieta. Svieta, with her short hair and a red pioneer scarf askew around her neck, smiling and welcoming me. We sat in Svieta’s entry hall, where the phone was, and we could smell the cooking of the neighbor sandwiched between Svieta’s and my floor. Her name was Anna Ivanovna and she was a master of pirozhki with cabbage and mushrooms. When I ran down to my flat, she opened the door and treated me to a warm glazed oval roll with a steaming center. She smiled, too, from under her bushy black eyebrows.
I was often sick in fifth and sixth grade. One time, I had a fever in school. Marina, one of the ultra popular and developed girls accused me of using lipstick. She was standing in the changing rooms where we had to leave our heavy overcoats, hats, scarves, gloves, and galoshes. She was barring my way, sure of herself: “Kat’, ty guby krasila!”. When I stayed home with colds and flus I laid in bed reading, learning how to file my nails, and embroidering funny cardboard pictures my dad drew for me. One evening I was surprised by a delegation of girls from my class. But they were not “visiting the sick” to comfort me or to give me company. They were officially dispatched by a teacher to drag me to a compulsory meeting called “ogoniok”. The meeting form must have evolved from a fireside sing-along; hence the name, meaning “little flame”. But it was, from what I understood, an indoctrination session for the young, not to be missed. I watched through feverish half-closed eyes as my parents quietly reasoned with five open-mouthed, incredulous girls, and explained that I really, truly, could not attend.
I have a small relic of these times. It is a memory book (with a lock!) of dedications and small photos of my classmates. Some of them were real friends and some were not. Here is the entry on page four: Nice Katya! Many years may go by and I will not forget you. Please don’t forget me. Correspondence will strengthen our friendship. Your friend, Svieta.
Where are you now? Did you hunt down Kiril and get married? If I were to get your letter now, I would be very happy.
